There are more people camping more nights at federally-owned facilities in North Carolina: nearly double the person-nights 2013-2019 excluding growth from facility+site_types not in reservation system in the first year. The clearest visualization is in section Are there trends by day of the week? in the plot NC camping each night of the week (person-nights): each year, every day of the week, in the summer and off-season, there were more people camping. The oddities of 2020 changed facility availability and campers’ behavior (temporarily we all hope).
With rising popularity, reservations for the most popular facilities and campsites are occurring earlier. Most facilities take reservations starting six months in advance; some 12 months. But don’t worry: especially for tent and RV camping, some sites are still available at most facilities a week or two in advance. And some facilities also have first-come, first-serve non-reservable sites which don’t show up in this data set.
In North Carolina the median per-person cost of camping is very low: around $5 for tent and RV camping, $3 for group camping, and $20 for cabin “camping”.
So what are you waiting for? Find a campsite at recreation.gov and make a reservation today.
–Daniel
Thanks to the folks at recreation.gov for making this data available. Also a special thanks to the rangers and other employees in our many park systems, protecting and stewarding our natural heritage for this and future generations.
Inspired by Tyler McIntosh’s article The Camping Crunch: Camping’s rise in popularity on America’s public lands1, I decided to use the same data set from recreation.gov2 to look at camping dynamics in North Carolina, where I live.
I wondered, in North Carolina …
First: what’s in the data, and are there any important limitations? I found five:
recreation.gov mostly processes reservations for federal facilities. It does not process reservations for state-owned public campgrounds in North Carolina. NC State Parks use ReserveAmerica.com instead, thus the campgrounds closest to my home in the Jordan Lake State Recreation Area and my favorite at Mount Mitchell are not included in this data set. As noted at https://www.ncparks.gov/find-a-park :
There are 41 places that are currently part of the North Carolina State Parks system: 34 parks, four recreation areas, and three staffed state natural areas.
Some campsites are not reservable, and some may not be reservable in the off season. So by definition, use of these sites will not show up in this data set.
Some campsites have become reservable during the years covered in this data set. For example, the NPS campgrounds at Cape Hatteras: Oregon Inlet and Frisco started taking reservations in 2015, and Cape Point started in 2016. When looking at multi-year growth, including these campgrounds unduly inflates the growth rate.
As is visible in the per-campground trend data starting with camping person-nights by park, there are a lot of outliers in the data in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Thus I have varied the end year as I saw fit to communicate trends most clearly. Likely there are two causes to these anomalies:
Data for 2018 and first half of 2019 are less reliable than other years as explained in the 2018 history readme:
Due to the transition between Rec.gov vendors the FY 2018 historical reservation data has not been fully verified for accuracy and completeness.
In 2020 due the the COVID-19 pandemic, people changed their behavior significantly, and camping facilities were closed for some periods of the year. For example, I assume that group campsites were used less frequently, and group size was smaller than earlier years.
As noted at trailandsummit.com the definition of “standard”, “tent” and “RV” overlap, which means counts and trends below that distinguish among these categories would not reflect the experience of campers, for example, in the availability of a campsite for them:
In most campgrounds, the term “standard campsite” is interchangeable with a “basic campsite.” Like basic sites, standard campsites usually have a driveway, a picnic table, and a fire ring or grill, and are normally reserved for groups of 6 people or less. Depending on the type of campground, standard sites may be suitable for tents or RVs, though they’re mostly used by tent campers. This is because most standard sites have driveways that are only suitable for smaller campers and campervans. That being said, in RV-only campgrounds, standard campsites may refer to a site where you get everything listed above, plus a simple electric hookup, but no water or sewer.
Given there are no RV-only campgrounds among these federally-owned facilities in NC, I am recognizing all “standard” sites as “tent” sites.
So setting aside the NC State Park system, I focus here on federal facilities in NC, which amidst the oddities of 2020 provided 785,845 person-nights of camping and collected $3,369,447 in overnight camping fees.
For the sake of brevity, I refer to the facilities as campgrounds with campsites even though some are cabins, lodges, lookouts, and shelters.
There are 46 federal facilities in North Carolina offering reservations through recreation.gov, which I consolidated from 56 separate facility_id values (some parks record cabins or group campgrounds with separate facility ids).
A summary table can be found in Appendix 1 NC facility summary
The following federal agencies offer overnight camping with reservations via recreation.gov:
| Federal agencies offering overnight camping reservations in NC via recreation.gov |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| org_name | n_facilities | org_abb | org_url |
| USDA Forest Service | 31 | FS | http://www.fs.fed.us |
| National Park Service | 22 | NPS | http://www.nps.gov |
| US Army Corps of Engineers | 3 | USACE | http://www.usace.army.mil |
Parks are nearly all in the mountains in the West or at coast in the East.
About half the campgrounds have at least 50 campsites:
These facilities provided nearly 7 million person-nights of camping 2009-2020.
Some notes:
person_night is one person camping one night. So if four people camp on a Friday and Saturday night, that’s 8 person_nights. Based on personal experience organizing group camping events for Scouts, I think person-night counts for group sites are probably less accurate than the others (but likely within 10% of actual).feature_id values for each site_type offered. Some have slightly different names, for example, I have combined Cataloochee Group Camp + Cataloochee Horse Camp + Cataloochee Campground into one facility_name with a common facility_id_group.facility_id_group, n_sites is a count of distinct product_id values. I assume that, in general, product_id values have not changed over time, and the same value is not used for multiple campsites at the same facility. This is not quite true, resulting in counts of camping sites in NC varying by up to 7%, depending how you count. For my purposes here this doesn’t matter. Details are in Appendix 1 There is some reuse of product_id values (unfortunately).As discussed in Appendix 1 Reservable sites added during the years of interest, Some recorded growth is due to more inventory added to the recreation.gov reservation system, which inflates the growth rate. How much? In 2019 it was 36% of all person_nights.
In year-based comparison views, I provide both views.
The remainder of this section refers to (B):
After the small dip in 2013 growth started in 2014. The number of additional nights of tent camping make up most of the increase, even though RV and group camping grew faster than tent camping.
Since the small dip in 2013, growth in person_nights in (B) overall was 93.9%.
Why did growth start in 2014 and keep going? There is nothing in the data that answers this question.
The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) was 9.9% for person_nights and 9.8% for revenue. Growth varied by site_type:
| NC camping compound annual growth rate 2013 - 2019 |
||
|---|---|---|
| site_type | cagr_person_nights | cagr_revenue |
| cabin | 8.5% | 7.3% |
| equestrian | 3.2% | 3.7% |
| group | 14.4% | 7.7% |
| rv | 13.8% | 19.4% |
| tent | 10.9% | 11.2% |
The changes year-to-year are more variable than the above table implies:
The number of yearly person-nights has been increasing in most parks:
Part 1:
NC camping person-nights per year by campground (part 1)
Part 2:
NC camping person-nights per year by campground (part 2)
Likewise camping revenue has been increasing in most parks, with 2020 being an anomaly for many of them.
Part 1:
NC camping revenue per year by campground (part 1)
Part 2:
NC camping revenue per year by campground (part 2)
Defining the summer season to be the four months May 15 to Sep 15, one can see that most camps are busiest during the summer. And while the number of camping person-nights has increased year-round, for most campgrounds, more of the growth has been during the summer:
Part 1:
NC seasonal camping person-nights per year by campground (part 1)
Part 2:
NC seasonal camping person-nights per year by campground (part 2)
Weekend nights are about twice as popular as mid-week:
There are increasing yearly number of person-nights on all nights of the week. The most noticeable 2020 anomaly is extra Sunday, Monday and Tuesday night camping. Presumably this was due to the pandemic shutdown, perhaps because people had fewer recreational options than other years. The unusually low off-season 2020 numbers probably reflect camp closures.
The pattern is the same whether one includes all facility+site_type combos or not:
Since the data set does not include a declared number of sites per facility+site_type that is reliable, I calculate the daily and weekly percent occupancy as the percent of the maximum recorded occupancy for the campground + site type over the years of interest.
Percent occupancy is defined as follows, for all facilities offering reservations at the time:
Daily: mean percent of occupancy for that day that year, or for that day averaged over multiple years
Weekly: weighted mean percent of occupancy for that week
Limitations
I am looking at 2009-2017, since the data in 2018 and 2019 are unreliable, and usage patterns in 2020 were not typical. In some plots I further subset the data in the interest of readability.
Is 100% occupancy rate the same as max occupancy? I cannot determine that from the data. Can one assume that each campground + site type reached 100% occupancy at least once? If so, then yes, max occupancy would mean 100% occupancy.
This method may under-estimate occupancy rates in earlier years if facilities added additional inventory of an existing site_type. I am unwilling to assume that every facility+site_type reached maximum occupancy every year, so I cannot calculate a yearly max. Since I am using all facilities (not limited to ones offering reservations in 2009), if a facility added additional inventory of an existing site_type, prior years will under-report occupancy rate.
Some sites have a mix of reservable and non-reservable sites. When campers show up and take a campsite, does it show up in the reservations.gov as a reservation on the start_date? Are there campsite still using the honor system, where campers deposit payment during their stay and a park staff person picks it up later. If so, are these entered into the reservation system and do they show up in this data set?
The difference in occupancy rates off-season and during the summer are not as different as I expected. This may be due to the climate in NC: the most pleasant times to camp are in the spring and fall. Scouting and other community groups are most likely to camp in the off-season (while school is in session).
When considering only Friday and Saturday nights, which are the most popular nights for camping:
Some notes:
How many days have campground + site type experienced max occupancy? Frankly, not as many as I expected. Here are two views of the same information. A list of the campsites are in Appendix 1 Days with occupancy at 100 and 90 percent
What about days >= 90% occupancy instead of 100%? Still not as many as I expected.
As one might expect, sites in limited supply are booked earlier: more than a third of group sites and more than a quarter of of cabins are booked six months before the start date. In contrast: consistently, only a third of tent sites are reserved 30 days in advance.
It looks like in the early years one could reserve most cabins with 6 months lead time. Then for 2012 and later years the cabin policy changed to 12 months lead time.
Tent, RV, and equestrian sites can be reserved six months in advance.
The data for 2018 and 2019 seem to have some errors, which are visible in the upper right of each plot: why are there order dates after start_date? These are the only two years in which this pattern is visible in the plots.
I note again here that some parks have sites that are first-come, first-serve (i.e., they are not reservable). By definition those sites do not show up here.
There has been a general trend towards reserving earlier:
The plots above mask differences in campgrounds. As you would expect some parks are more popular then others, with a greater portion of the reservations occurring earlier. Over the years, most properties are seeing earlier reservations. Swan Cabin is experiencing the opposite trend.
The most popular group campgrounds seem to be Cove Creek Upper and Lower Group Camp, and Kuykendall Group Camp. Other group campsites are included with other site types, so if they have the same dynamic, it’s not visible in these plots.
Cabins and Group Camps are the most likely to show a linear-like increase in reservations over time (after the early birds reserve as soon as reservations open).
Davidson River and Big Creek have about 50% of tent sites booked 60 days before start date. Most don’t achieve that until 30 days or fewer before start date. It’s interesting that 6 of the 32 campgrounds started offering reservations through recreation.gov in recent years. I assume in prior years these sites were not reservable.
Cove Creek and Kuykendall group camps seem most popular, with nearly half the group reservations made a year in advance–as soon as the reservations opened. Next most popular are by Cataloochee and White Pines. Briar Bottom and North Mills River have seen remarkable increases in early reservations in recent years.
Wash Creek looks like the only equestrian camp to allow bookings a year in advance. Among the rest, Cataloochee has the most consistent reservation pattern over the years.
With RV sites, Lake Powhatan and Smokemont have the biggest early surge when reservations open six months in advance.
While Powhatan has been 75% booked 30 days in advance, Linville Falls has been less than 50% booked 15-20 days ahead.
For the camps that allow cabin reservations a year in advance, Balsam Lake books faster than Great Island or Long Point. Of those that take bookings six months in advance, Swan books faster than Cheoah Point.
Median cabin cost per person doubled in 2012, and equestrian per-person cost grew 2013- 2017. Otherwise median prices were generally stable. Note that these costs are not inflation-adjusted.
Per-person costs at group and equestrian sites in 2020 seem like an aberration: either the more expensive sites were not used much, group sizes were a lot larger (which seems unlikely during the pandemic), there was some other change in usage pattern, or there could be a problem with the data.
There are 46 federal facilities in North Carolina offering reservations through recreation.gov, which I consolidated from 56 separate facility_id values (some parks record cabins or group campgrounds as separate facilities).
| Site types offered by federal camping facilities in NC | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| facility_id_group | facility_name | facility_id_list | Site type | n_sites | |||||
| tent | cabin | group | equestrian | rv | management | ||||
| 1 | Arrowhead Campground | 233910 | 92 | 92 | |||||
| 2 | Badin Lake Group Camp + Badin Lake Campground | 233912, 233911 | 65 | 6 | 71 | ||||
| 3 | Balsam Lake Lodge + Balsam Mountain Campground | 233975, 273848 | 84 | 2 | 86 | ||||
| 4 | Bandits Roost | 233421 | 204 | 2 | 206 | ||||
| 5 | Big Creek Horse Camp + Big Creek Group Camp + Big Creek Campground | 232484, 232437, 273821 | 12 | 2 | 14 | 28 | |||
| 6 | Black Mountain Campground | 273780 | 34 | 34 | |||||
| 7 | Briar Bottom Group Campground | 233947 | 12 | 12 | |||||
| 8 | Canebrake Horse Camp | 233913 | 54 | 54 | |||||
| 9 | Cape Point Campground | 251945 | 190 | 190 | |||||
| 10 | Carolina Hemlocks Rec Area | 233954 | 22 | 22 | |||||
| 11 | Cataloochee Group Camp + Cataloochee Horse Camp + Cataloochee Campground | 232434, 232482, 233284 | 54 | 6 | 15 | 75 | |||
| 12 | Cedar Point Campground | 233312 | 70 | 1 | 71 | ||||
| 13 | Cheoah Point Cabin 1 + Cheoah Point Cabin 2 + Cheoah Point Campground | 234584, 234585, 234583 | 13 | 4 | 17 | ||||
| 14 | Cove Creek Lower Group Camp + Cove Creek Upper Group Camp | 233108, 231992 | 4 | 4 | |||||
| 15 | Curtis Creek Campground | 251469 | 37 | 37 | |||||
| 16 | Davidson River | 231993 | 240 | 1 | 241 | ||||
| 17 | Deep Creek Group Camp | 232478 | 6 | 6 | |||||
| 18 | Doughton Park Campground | 233369 | 41 | 3 | 23 | 67 | |||
| 19 | Flanners Beach Campground | 234718 | 66 | 66 | |||||
| 20 | Fort Hamby Park | 234253 | 64 | 2 | 66 | ||||
| 21 | Frisco Campground | 251430 | 103 | 19 | 122 | ||||
| 22 | Great Island Cabin Camp | 233332 | 48 | 2 | 50 | ||||
| 23 | Harmon Den Horse Campground | 234424 | 20 | 20 | |||||
| 24 | Jackrabbit Mountain | 234180 | 155 | 52 | 207 | ||||
| 25 | Julian Price Campground | 234037 | 110 | 58 | 168 | ||||
| 26 | Kuykendall Group Camp | 231994 | 2 | 2 | |||||
| 27 | Lake Powhatan | 231995 | 110 | 35 | 14 | 159 | |||
| 28 | Linville Falls Campground | 234036 | 55 | 4 | 27 | 86 | |||
| 29 | Long Point Cabin Camp | 233333 | 40 | 40 | |||||
| 30 | Mount Pisgah Campground | 234182 | 60 | 54 | 114 | ||||
| 31 | North Mills River | 232380 | 24 | 2 | 26 | ||||
| 32 | Ocracoke Campground | 232504 | 139 | 4 | 143 | ||||
| 33 | Oregon Inlet Campground | 251431 | 119 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 128 | ||
| 34 | Oyster Point Campground | 262810 | 29 | 29 | |||||
| 35 | Rattler Ford Group Campground | 234370 | 8 | 8 | |||||
| 36 | Rocky Bluff Campground | 264886 | 17 | 17 | |||||
| 37 | Round Bottom Horse Camp | 232483 | 11 | 11 | |||||
| 38 | Smokemont Campground + Smokemont Group Camp | 232486, 232441 | 210 | 6 | 107 | 323 | |||
| 39 | Standing Indian Campground | 234228 | 66 | 6 | 72 | ||||
| 40 | Swan Cabin | 234313 | 2 | 2 | |||||
| 41 | Tow String Horse Camp | 232481 | 7 | 7 | |||||
| 42 | Van Hook Glade | 232399 | 18 | 18 | |||||
| 43 | Warrior Creek | 233665 | 138 | 5 | 143 | ||||
| 44 | Wash Creek Horse Camp | 234743 | 2 | 2 | |||||
| 45 | White Pine South Group Camp | 233109 | 2 | 2 | |||||
| 46 | Wolf Ford Horse Camp | 10011396 | 11 | 11 | |||||
| Total inventory | - | - | 2,641 | 96 | 81 | 134 | 380 | 23 | 3,355 |
The following table is ordered by average yearly person_nights, which provides one measure of popularity. n_years is the number of years recreation.gov has managed reservations for the campground.
| Facilities in NC offering overnight camping reservations And person-nights of camping 2009-2020 via recreation.gov |
|||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| facility_id_group | facility_name | n_sites | person_nights1 | avg_yearly_person_nights2 | n_years |
| 16 | Davidson River | 241 | 709,053 | 59,088 | 12 |
| 38 | Smokemont Campground + Smokemont Group Camp | 323 | 662,266 | 55,189 | 12 |
| 4 | Bandits Roost | 206 | 637,752 | 53,146 | 12 |
| 33 | Oregon Inlet Campground | 128 | 205,724 | 34,287 | 6 |
| 22 | Great Island Cabin Camp | 50 | 229,138 | 25,460 | 9 |
| 32 | Ocracoke Campground | 143 | 304,024 | 25,335 | 12 |
| 11 | Cataloochee Group Camp + Cataloochee Horse Camp + Cataloochee Campground | 75 | 296,641 | 24,720 | 12 |
| 27 | Lake Powhatan | 165 | 296,485 | 24,707 | 12 |
| 2 | Badin Lake Group Camp + Badin Lake Campground | 71 | 290,117 | 24,176 | 12 |
| 14 | Cove Creek Lower Group Camp + Cove Creek Upper Group Camp | 8 | 273,900 | 22,825 | 12 |
| 43 | Warrior Creek | 143 | 266,570 | 22,214 | 12 |
| 24 | Jackrabbit Mountain | 207 | 257,140 | 21,428 | 12 |
| 39 | Standing Indian Campground | 72 | 228,452 | 19,038 | 12 |
| 7 | Briar Bottom Group Campground | 12 | 217,519 | 18,127 | 12 |
| 29 | Long Point Cabin Camp | 40 | 144,762 | 18,095 | 8 |
| 1 | Arrowhead Campground | 92 | 192,817 | 16,068 | 12 |
| 12 | Cedar Point Campground | 71 | 158,801 | 15,880 | 10 |
| 21 | Frisco Campground | 122 | 94,835 | 15,806 | 6 |
| 25 | Julian Price Campground | 181 | 181,407 | 15,117 | 12 |
| 30 | Mount Pisgah Campground | 114 | 158,812 | 13,234 | 12 |
| 20 | Fort Hamby Park | 71 | 143,977 | 11,998 | 12 |
| 6 | Black Mountain Campground | 34 | 30,284 | 10,095 | 3 |
| 26 | Kuykendall Group Camp | 2 | 99,244 | 8,270 | 12 |
| 8 | Canebrake Horse Camp | 54 | 88,208 | 7,351 | 12 |
| 17 | Deep Creek Group Camp | 6 | 88,193 | 7,349 | 12 |
| 9 | Cape Point Campground | 190 | 35,470 | 7,094 | 5 |
| 10 | Carolina Hemlocks Rec Area | 22 | 19,493 | 6,498 | 3 |
| 31 | North Mills River | 26 | 76,916 | 6,410 | 12 |
| 28 | Linville Falls Campground | 86 | 76,675 | 6,390 | 12 |
| 35 | Rattler Ford Group Campground | 8 | 73,324 | 6,110 | 12 |
| 19 | Flanners Beach Campground | 66 | 52,934 | 5,882 | 9 |
| 5 | Big Creek Horse Camp + Big Creek Group Camp + Big Creek Campground | 28 | 65,112 | 5,426 | 12 |
| 3 | Balsam Lake Lodge + Balsam Mountain Campground | 86 | 60,948 | 5,079 | 12 |
| 13 | Cheoah Point Cabin 1 + Cheoah Point Cabin 2 + Cheoah Point Campground | 21 | 60,000 | 5,000 | 12 |
| 15 | Curtis Creek Campground | 37 | 24,401 | 4,067 | 6 |
| 42 | Van Hook Glade | 18 | 39,979 | 3,332 | 12 |
| 45 | White Pine South Group Camp | 2 | 36,891 | 3,074 | 12 |
| 44 | Wash Creek Horse Camp | 2 | 15,504 | 1,938 | 8 |
| 18 | Doughton Park Campground | 67 | 16,932 | 1,881 | 9 |
| 34 | Oyster Point Campground | 29 | 7,201 | 1,800 | 4 |
| 40 | Swan Cabin | 2 | 18,826 | 1,569 | 12 |
| 36 | Rocky Bluff Campground | 17 | 1,263 | 1,263 | 1 |
| 23 | Harmon Den Horse Campground | 20 | 12,087 | 1,007 | 12 |
| 37 | Round Bottom Horse Camp | 11 | 4,850 | 404 | 12 |
| 46 | Wolf Ford Horse Camp | 11 | 690 | 345 | 2 |
| 41 | Tow String Horse Camp | 7 | 1,070 | 89 | 12 |
| Total | — | 3,387 | 6,956,687 | — | — |
|
1
Sum of all person-nights of reserved camping with start date in 2009 through 2020 via recreation.gov
2
Since the number of person-nights has been increasing year-over-year, for campgrounds that have become more popular, the average under-respresents recent activity at campgrounds with the most years of data
|
|||||
As noted in the table above and the individual facility plots in Camping person-nights by park and subsequent plots, some campgrounds did not offer reservable sites during all the years of interest. In most of these cases, non-reservable sites were converted to ones taking reservations during the years of interest.
The following campgrounds did not offer any reservable sites in 2009 :
| facility_id | facility_name | site_type | first_year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 273780 | Black Mountain Campground | tent | 2018 |
| 251945 | Cape Point Campground | tent | 2016 |
| 233954 | Carolina Hemlocks Rec Area | tent | 2018 |
| 233312 | Cedar Point Campground | tent | 2011 |
| 251469 | Curtis Creek Campground | tent | 2015 |
| 233369 | Doughton Park Campground | group | 2019 |
| 233369 | Doughton Park Campground | rv | 2012 |
| 233369 | Doughton Park Campground | tent | 2012 |
| 234718 | Flanners Beach Campground | tent | 2012 |
| 251430 | Frisco Campground | rv | 2020 |
| 251430 | Frisco Campground | tent | 2015 |
| 233332 | Great Island Cabin Camp | cabin | 2012 |
| 233333 | Long Point Cabin Camp | cabin | 2012 |
| 251431 | Oregon Inlet Campground | group | 2015 |
| 251431 | Oregon Inlet Campground | rv | 2015 |
| 251431 | Oregon Inlet Campground | tent | 2015 |
| 262810 | Oyster Point Campground | tent | 2017 |
| 264886 | Rocky Bluff Campground | tent | 2020 |
| 234743 | Wash Creek Horse Camp | equestrian | 2013 |
| 10011396 | Wolf Ford Horse Camp | equestrian | 2019 |
The following campgrounds had at least one site_type reservable in 2009 and added the site_type in the year noted below:
| facility_id | facility_name | site_type | first_year |
|---|---|---|---|
| 273848 | Balsam Mountain Campground | tent | 2018 |
| 273821 | Big Creek Campground | tent | 2018 |
| 233284 | Cataloochee Campground | tent | 2011 |
| 234036 | Linville Falls Campground | group | 2016 |
| 232380 | North Mills River | group | 2014 |
This complicates matters. Since the difference is at most 228 (7%), I generally work with counts calculated using “group_by(facility_id, site_type)” and ignore the differences otherwise.
| Counting sites in nc_history product_id is not unique in all cases |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| counting_method | n_sites | delta | comment |
| summarize(n = n_distinct(product_id)) | 3,269 | — | Baseline: simple count of distinct product_id values in data set |
| group_by(facility_id) %>% summarize(n = n_distinct(product_id)) %>% ungroup() %>% pull(n) %>% sum() | 3,294 | 25 | Additional cases in which multiple facilities use the sampe product_id values |
| group_by(facility_id, site_type) %>% summarize(n = n_distinct(product_id)) %>% ungroup() %>% pull(n) %>% sum() | 3,379 | 85 | Additional cases in which multiple facilities use the same product_id values across multiple site_type categories |
| group_by(facility_id, site_type_original) %>% summarize(n = n_distinct(product_id)) %>% ngroup() %>% pull(n) %>% sum() | 3,497 | 118 | Additional cases in which multiple facilities use the same product_id values across more detailed, multiple, original site_type categories |
| Total | — | 228 | — |
It seems recreation.gov included existing reservable NC inventory by the end of 2008. So I start with 2009 in most cases. Note that some existing campsites were added later when they became reservable, for example the NPS campgrounds at Cape Hatteras: Oregon Inlet and Frisco started taking reservations in 2015, and Cape Point started in 2016 (at the end of 2021 Camp Point was taking same-day reservations only according to https://www.nps.gov/caha/planyourvisit/campgrounds.htm).
| Number of days facilities were at max occupancy 2013-2020 by site type |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| facility_name | site_type | season | n_days | n_days_all_site_types1 |
| Bandits Roost | group | summer | 17 | 19 |
| Linville Falls Campground | group | summer | 10 | 17 |
| Linville Falls Campground | group | off-season | 5 | 17 |
| Fort Hamby Park | group | summer | 8 | 9 |
| Badin Lake Group Camp | group | off-season | 5 | 5 |
| Balsam Lake Lodge | cabin | summer | 5 | 5 |
| Big Creek Group Camp | group | summer | 5 | 5 |
| Wash Creek Horse Camp | equestrian | summer | 5 | 5 |
| Doughton Park Campground | group | off-season | 3 | 5 |
| Cove Creek Lower Group Camp | group | summer | 4 | 4 |
| Kuykendall Group Camp | group | summer | 4 | 4 |
| Cheoah Point Campground | tent | summer | 3 | 4 |
| Oregon Inlet Campground | rv | summer | 2 | 4 |
| Briar Bottom Group Campground | group | summer | 3 | 3 |
| Cove Creek Upper Group Camp | group | summer | 3 | 3 |
| Flanners Beach Campground | tent | summer | 3 | 3 |
| Smokemont Group Camp | group | summer | 3 | 3 |
| Lake Powhatan | rv | summer | 2 | 3 |
| North Mills River | group | summer | 2 | 3 |
| Standing Indian Campground | group | off-season | 2 | 3 |
| Deep Creek Group Camp | group | summer | 2 | 2 |
| Long Point Cabin Camp | cabin | off-season | 2 | 2 |
| Rattler Ford Group Campground | group | summer | 2 | 2 |
| White Pine South Group Camp | group | summer | 2 | 2 |
| Wolf Ford Horse Camp | equestrian | summer | 2 | 2 |
|
1
Simple addition of n_days for each site type, not checking whether any of the max occupancy dates overlapped
|
||||
| Number of days facilities were at least 90% occupied 2013-2020 by site type |
||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| facility_name | site_type | season | n_days | n_days_all_site_types1 |
| Warrior Creek | tent | summer | 25 | 34 |
| Warrior Creek | tent | off-season | 6 | 34 |
| Warrior Creek | group | summer | 3 | 34 |
| Jackrabbit Mountain | tent | summer | 12 | 24 |
| Jackrabbit Mountain | rv | summer | 10 | 24 |
| Jackrabbit Mountain | rv | off-season | 2 | 24 |
| Linville Falls Campground | group | summer | 10 | 22 |
| Linville Falls Campground | group | off-season | 5 | 22 |
| Linville Falls Campground | tent | summer | 3 | 22 |
| Linville Falls Campground | rv | off-season | 2 | 22 |
| Cove Creek Lower Group Camp | group | summer | 21 | 21 |
| Oregon Inlet Campground | rv | summer | 12 | 21 |
| Oregon Inlet Campground | tent | summer | 7 | 21 |
| Oregon Inlet Campground | group | summer | 2 | 21 |
| Bandits Roost | group | summer | 17 | 20 |
| Mount Pisgah Campground | tent | summer | 13 | 20 |
| Mount Pisgah Campground | rv | summer | 5 | 20 |
| Bandits Roost | tent | summer | 2 | 20 |
| Mount Pisgah Campground | rv | off-season | 2 | 20 |
| Lake Powhatan | rv | summer | 13 | 19 |
| Lake Powhatan | tent | summer | 6 | 19 |
| Briar Bottom Group Campground | group | summer | 18 | 18 |
| Fort Hamby Park | tent | summer | 10 | 18 |
| Fort Hamby Park | group | summer | 8 | 18 |
| Big Creek Group Camp | group | summer | 17 | 17 |
| Flanners Beach Campground | tent | summer | 15 | 15 |
| Smokemont Group Camp | group | summer | 14 | 15 |
| Standing Indian Campground | tent | summer | 10 | 15 |
| Standing Indian Campground | group | summer | 3 | 15 |
| Standing Indian Campground | group | off-season | 2 | 15 |
| Cataloochee Group Camp | group | summer | 7 | 12 |
| Smokemont Campground | tent | summer | 7 | 12 |
| Cataloochee Group Camp | group | off-season | 5 | 12 |
| Smokemont Campground | rv | summer | 5 | 12 |
| Kuykendall Group Camp | group | summer | 10 | 10 |
| Long Point Cabin Camp | cabin | off-season | 10 | 10 |
| Frisco Campground | tent | summer | 7 | 10 |
| Frisco Campground | rv | summer | 3 | 10 |
| Badin Lake Group Camp | group | off-season | 7 | 7 |
| Cove Creek Upper Group Camp | group | summer | 7 | 7 |
| Davidson River | tent | summer | 7 | 7 |
| Deep Creek Group Camp | group | summer | 7 | 7 |
| Cheoah Point Campground | tent | summer | 5 | 7 |
| Cheoah Point Campground | tent | off-season | 2 | 7 |
| North Mills River | group | summer | 4 | 6 |
| Doughton Park Campground | group | off-season | 3 | 6 |
| North Mills River | tent | summer | 2 | 6 |
| Balsam Lake Lodge | cabin | summer | 5 | 5 |
| Big Creek Campground | tent | summer | 5 | 5 |
| Oyster Point Campground | tent | summer | 5 | 5 |
| Rattler Ford Group Campground | group | summer | 5 | 5 |
| Wash Creek Horse Camp | equestrian | summer | 5 | 5 |
| Badin Lake Campground | tent | summer | 4 | 5 |
| Van Hook Glade | tent | summer | 4 | 5 |
| Julian Price Campground | tent | off-season | 2 | 5 |
| Julian Price Campground | tent | summer | 2 | 5 |
| White Pine South Group Camp | group | summer | 4 | 4 |
| Great Island Cabin Camp | cabin | off-season | 2 | 4 |
| Great Island Cabin Camp | cabin | summer | 2 | 4 |
| Black Mountain Campground | tent | summer | 3 | 3 |
| Cape Point Campground | tent | summer | 3 | 3 |
| Cataloochee Horse Camp | equestrian | summer | 3 | 3 |
| Rocky Bluff Campground | tent | summer | 3 | 3 |
| Arrowhead Campground | tent | summer | 2 | 2 |
| Canebrake Horse Camp | equestrian | off-season | 2 | 2 |
| Carolina Hemlocks Rec Area | tent | summer | 2 | 2 |
| Curtis Creek Campground | tent | summer | 2 | 2 |
| Ocracoke Campground | tent | summer | 2 | 2 |
| Wolf Ford Horse Camp | equestrian | summer | 2 | 2 |
|
1
Simple addition of n_days for each site type, not checking whether any of the max occupancy dates overlapped
|
||||
NC inventory on-boarding at recreation.gov seems generally consistent with the rest of the USA: 2008 was the first year that recreation.gov was able to offer reservations on nearly all of the existing camping facilities across the USA. So comparing later years with a 2009 baseline provides our best view of year-to-year increases in inventory in the parks. This includes some new or existing parks coming on-line as well, as seen above in the parks that have data only for very recent years.
Starting in 2009 each year saw a very small number of campgrounds adding newly reservable overnight site types. Again, these are for the whole USA.
It seems like normal growth in in 2009 and following years as facilities added additional types of sites and perhaps some new facilities opened. The overall compound annual growth rate3 between 2009 and 2020 was 2.6%, with some differences in the kinds of sites:
| Public parks with overnight camping with reservations at recreation.gov in 2020 |
|||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| facility_state | n_parks | Number of parks offering site type | |||||||
| tent | cabin | group | rv | equestrian | shelter | management | other1 | ||
| (not_specified) | 106 | 75 | 8 | 13 | 13 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| AK | 202 | 16 | 186 | 2 | 7 | ||||
| AL | 19 | 19 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| AR | 83 | 80 | 2 | 11 | 11 | 13 | 1 | ||
| AZ | 101 | 44 | 18 | 55 | 4 | 5 | 1 | 1 | |
| CA | 460 | 303 | 33 | 164 | 25 | 20 | 1 | 28 | 5 |
| CO | 190 | 136 | 26 | 40 | 23 | 6 | 1 | 5 | |
| CT | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||||||
| FL | 23 | 13 | 1 | 8 | 6 | 1 | 2 | ||
| GA | 34 | 32 | 1 | 8 | 5 | 1 | 7 | 1 | |
| HI | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| IA | 21 | 20 | 6 | 1 | |||||
| ID | 179 | 90 | 51 | 69 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 |
| IL | 20 | 17 | 5 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| IN | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 3 | ||||
| KS | 35 | 33 | 18 | 1 | 2 | ||||
| KY | 34 | 29 | 1 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 4 | 1 | |
| LA | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| MA | 6 | 5 | 1 | ||||||
| MD | 15 | 9 | 1 | 8 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| ME | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 | |||||
| MI | 87 | 57 | 3 | 19 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | |
| MN | 35 | 33 | 3 | 7 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| MO | 53 | 49 | 1 | 21 | 2 | 1 | 7 | 1 | |
| MS | 21 | 20 | 2 | 2 | 5 | ||||
| MT | 187 | 50 | 111 | 34 | 7 | 1 | 5 | 2 | 1 |
| NC | 58 | 33 | 6 | 18 | 10 | 8 | 3 | 1 | |
| ND | 13 | 10 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| NE | 4 | 4 | 2 | 1 | |||||
| NH | 16 | 11 | 3 | 2 | |||||
| NJ | 1 | 1 | |||||||
| NM | 30 | 17 | 18 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | ||
| NV | 16 | 12 | 6 | 7 | 1 | ||||
| NY | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |||||
| OH | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | ||||
| OK | 58 | 54 | 16 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 1 | ||
| OR | 306 | 192 | 57 | 69 | 14 | 17 | 3 | 7 | 4 |
| PA | 25 | 21 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| SC | 12 | 9 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | ||
| SD | 17 | 13 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 | |||
| TN | 40 | 33 | 13 | 9 | 2 | 8 | 1 | ||
| TX | 79 | 74 | 36 | 11 | 8 | 21 | 9 | ||
| UT | 200 | 123 | 20 | 130 | 23 | 7 | 1 | 9 | 3 |
| VA | 43 | 24 | 4 | 17 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 1 | |
| VT | 5 | 5 | 1 | ||||||
| WA | 151 | 93 | 18 | 56 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 9 | |
| WI | 31 | 28 | 1 | 7 | 1 | 1 | |||
| WV | 16 | 12 | 1 | 6 | 1 | ||||
| WY | 76 | 41 | 23 | 18 | 3 | 1 | 1 | ||
| Total | 3,127 | 1,951 | 592 | 932 | 230 | 99 | 48 | 149 | 33 |
|
1
Other includes 'boat in', 'anchorage', 'mooring', 'zone' and a few others
|
|||||||||
The USA-level data does not include all reservable camping sites, presumably because they use a different reservation system. For example:
In contrast: Great Smokey Mountain National Park campgrounds are all reservable.
Some recreation areas allow camping; only two in the data set are reservable; they are not included here.
Review occupancy rates by day and week. The number of weeks at max occupancy suggests that I may be under-counting the number of days at max occupancy.
Add overall growth and CAGR to summary person_nights and revenue plots.
I wonder whether growth at the NC state parks was similar over this time period. My hunch is that the NC parks are more often at max occupancy, so the growth rate may be capped. If the same data were available from ReserveAmerica.com perhaps I would do a similar analysis. Supposedly there is an API at https://developer.active.com/docs/read/Campground_APIs, however the comments there suggest it is no longer available. The North Carolina Division of Parks and Recreation is part of the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources. Do they make the data available? I couldn’t find it in any of the NC government-sponsored open data portals. Might they make the data available if I ask?
For full-USA view, it might be interesting to normalize n_parks and/or n_sights by state population or state area to see which sites have a relative abundance or lack of federal campgrounds and/or campsites.
By Daniel Moul (heydanielmoul via gmail)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Code is available at https://github.com/dmoul/nc-camping under the MIT license.
Other analyses in this series can be found at https://dmoul.github.io
The Camping Crunch: Camping’s rise in popularity on America’s public lands was published Oct 21, 2021 on the website of the Center or Western Priorities at https://westernpriorities.org/the-camping-crunch/ . I found it through a reference in Jeremy Singer-Vine’s excellent newsletter Data is Plural↩︎
I downloaded the data set from https://ridb.recreation.gov/download on 2021-11-11, specifically (1) overview information in RIDB Recreation Data at https://ridb.recreation.gov/downloads/RIDBFullExport_V1_JSON.zip and (2) historical data for each year FY 2006 - FY 2020 as zipped CSV files, e.g, https://ridb.recreation.gov/downloads/reservations2020.zip for 2020↩︎
Growth rate in the number of facilities offering the various types of overnight sites, each facility + site_type counted once each year.↩︎